Ritchie Blackmore May Play More Rainbow Shows

Legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore says in a recent interview that his new version of Rainbow may do some additional shows and the set list will contain less Deep Purple material.

Blackmore was asked during an interview with Dutch radio station Radio Veronica if he had received any more offers for new shows following the limited run of special Rainbow shows earlier this summer.

He responded (via Blabbermouth), "Yes. Many. But I wanted to see how the three went. If they were disastrous and we had accepted more, it was gonna be awkward. We might do a few more shows again."

Blackmore was also asked if it was difficult to come up with the set lists for the recent Rainbow show and he responded, "No. [It was] very easy, in a way. We had about fifteen songs that were very obvious songs to play, like 'Catch The Rainbow'. And we incorporated a few Deep Purple songs - 'Black Night', 'Smoke [On The Water]', 'Highway Star' - of which some of the fans said, 'Why did you do those Deep Purple songs?'

A"nd I would say, 'Why not?' And they said, 'Well, we thought it was just gonna be Rainbow. We would prefer to hear [more] Rainbow songs.' Which I thought was kind of ironic again. I'm thinking, 'Wow! We just threw three songs in by Deep Purple when they wanted more [Rainbow].' And I noticed when they clapped, they weren't clapping so hard for Deep Purple [songs]. They said, 'We hear that every year,' 'cause [the current lineup of] Purple goes around [on tour]. So the next time, if we go out and we do anything, I would do probably ninety-five percent Rainbow songs; that's what they seem to want to hear. And it didn't occur to me. I just naturally assumed they wanted to hear everything." Read more from the interview and stream it in full here.